the government wants to know what you’re doing, they might need a warrant to kick down the door, but they rarely need anything more than a couple of keystrokes to get a great idea of what you’re plotting.
If you want even a modicum of privacy, stay in a hotel. The government can’t as easily bug a business as they can a person. And when you’re in a hotel, there are plenty of people willing to do your bidding, so that you may feel even more secure. Plus, the sheer amount of people who might stay in a room, in addition to the number of people who have access to a room, and the amount of government-mandated cleaning that goes on, makes a hotel a forensics nightmare for investigators. Too much opportunity for pollution equals reasonable doubt.
At a place like the Ace Hotel, where looking the other way is a selling point, you could probably do a whole lot of illegal things, provided you kept the right people paid and didn’t make too much noise. And even then, well, you’d probably be just fine.
The Ace Hotel was located just off Collins Avenue in South Beach, and the local lore was that it was once President Kennedy’s Miami getaway, a place he’d go to meet with Marilyn Monroe and the Mafia and probably Castro, too. It was a small hotel-only four stories-but it made up for its lack of size by offering fifteen two-bedroom villas that faced the Miami Beach canal. It was one of those great mysteries of tourism: Why spend thousands of dollars to sleep in a villa that was likely not as nice as your own home?
“It is that one,” Pablo said. We’d followed him out of the pool area and around the back of the hotel and through the (intentionally) overgrown botanical gardens, which subtly hid the villas from sight. Nothing says “privacy” quite like plants grown to twice their normal size. That and water features burbling away in some hidden crevice-boutique hotels are always big on hidden crevices that contain very small fountains-make celebrities and the very rich feel like they are one with nature.
“Which one?” Sam said.
Pablo pointed in the vague direction of a twelve-foot thrust of fountain grass. “There,” he said. He was still sweating profusely and my glasses kept sliding down his nose, so that he had to continually push them up. He turned to me and handed me a room key card. “Take this,” he said.
“One minute,” I said. He hadn’t said a word since we left the pool and had grown consistently more nervous as we walked, which made me think we were walking into an ambush. “What’s in the villa?”
“Bad men,” he said.
Fiona groaned in exasperation. She reached over and snatched my glasses off Pablo’s face and handed them back to me. They were a bit too damp for my taste. “Pablo,” she said, “I’m not as patient nor as willing to spend money on frivolous information as my two simian friends. So I’m going to need you to speak only in complete sentences now. I know you’re scared of something, but if you aren’t more forthcoming with information, you will actually have a reason to be scared, versus the normal, unfounded fears of your sex.”
“Uh, Fi,” I said, but she waved me off.
Pablo’s sweaty fear was now wide-eyed anguish, so that was a nice change. “The man who rents this room? He tells me not to come and clean. But you understand, if I do not clean the rooms, I can lose my job. They track our security cards, so they always know if we’ve gone in the rooms and villas, you see. So they know. And I cannot lose my job. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Fiona said. She put her hand on Pablo’s wrist. Very gentle. Very caring. She had that ability for kindness, too, but she could also snap his wrist if she decided she didn’t trust him. “Please, continue.”
“So I wait until I see the man leave and I go and just slide my card in, so it registers. You see? But then the door is open and curiosity, you see, it gets the better of me.”
“Killed the cat,” Sam said, which was entirely the wrong thing to say at that moment.
“I know. I know. I know,” Pablo said. “I find guns. Many, many guns. And much money. Much money. But it isn’t real. The money, that is. I find this out the wrong way.”
“Please, tell me you did not steal counterfeit money and then use it to pay your water bill or something,” I said. Pablo’s eyes got wider, if that was possible. He wiped his face with his sleeve, but he didn’t say anything. Whatever he did with the money, it was the wrong thing to do. “How much did you take?” I asked.
“One thousand,” he said. “I bought a round of drinks at the bar here and paid with a fifty that was apparently not such a good copy. So, so, I try to take the money back, but by that time, I’d already spent maybe five hundred, so I cannot afford to pay back another real five hundred.”
“When was the last time you went into the room?” I asked.
“Three days. I slide my card, but I do not go in. But the men who come and go, they do not look like the kind of people I’d like to anger.”
“And what do we look like?” Sam said.
Pablo stammered for a moment, but then Fiona applied a slight bit of pressure to his wrist, which seemed to focus his attention. “I figure you are good guys, or else why would you want to know what’s happening?”
I handed Pablo back my sunglasses. He needed them more than I did. “Fiona,” I said, “give him your earrings.”
“What?”
“Your earrings,” I said.
“They’re diamond,” she said.
“Did you buy them?”
“They were a gift,” she said.
“From who?”
“From a gentleman who didn’t have quite enough money for a fair-priced assault rifle.”
“Consider it karmic reparations,” I said.
Fiona took off her two rather large diamond studs and handed them to Pablo, who didn’t quite know what to do with them, mostly because Fiona was making noises in her throat like a cornered tiger. It can be slightly disconcerting to those who don’t know Fiona’s noises.
“What am I to do?” Pablo said.
“Go home sick,” I said.
“For how long?” he asked.
“Forever,” I said.
Pablo looked down at the diamond earrings in his hand and then back at Fiona. He plucked up one of the earrings and tried to hand it back to Fiona. “Maybe one is enough?”
“They’re a matched set,” Fiona said.
“Go,” I said to Pablo, “before I change my mind.”
Pablo deposited the earrings in his pocket and then scurried out of sight in what must have been record time.
“Guess it’s true,” Sam said once Pablo was gone, “that you can’t trust the help at hotels not to go through your shit.”
I handed the key card to Fiona. “Why don’t you see if you can accidentally open the door to the wrong villa,” I said.
“And get shot?” she said.
“No one shoots a pretty girl in a bikini,” Sam said. “And besides, with all that oil on you, a bullet would slide right off you.”
“Or I’ll instantly ignite,” she said.
I had a better idea. I called the front desk and asked to be connected to the villa. I hung up after five rings. “There’s no one there,” I said.
“Would you feel better if Uncle Sam was standing next to you with his big, mean gun, Fiona?” Sam said.
Fiona gave both of us one of her patented “I could live a better life without both of you” glares and stomped off toward the villa. Sam and I followed behind her at a slight distance, and then lingered out of sight in the nuclear-treated fountain grass as she approached the door. Though Fiona didn’t have a gun on her-hard to hide a gun in a bikini-I was certain she could handle herself in the face of danger. Plus, Sam was right: No one shoots a pretty girl in a bikini. It just goes against nature.
Fiona slipped the key card in just as anyone might when they’re returning to their villa-which is to say, she portrayed no nerves in the least-and opened the door. I listened for screams or gunshots or even a muffled yelp, but heard nothing. The door closed behind her with an audible click.
A few seconds later, my cell phone rang.
